KINGS AND THINGS
by
Otto Schmidt
This paper was adapted from a book review I wrote in my PhD Effort It is useful for illustrating the whole range of funny names kings have which just happen to be real. As with everything, you can't make this stuff up, and Monty Python at its best could not match real life.
Kings have exercised a special fascination in the west, and the title of king has attained a unique cachet in the psyche of men and women. Monarchs, not only kings and emperors, but any sovereign of lesser title who could live by the formula "rex et imperio in regno suo", have been vested by their subjects, as the repositories of loyalty, aspirations, and hope. Kings in the west live, in the minds of men, cheek-by- jowl with their subjects, in a more or less easy familiarity. In the east on the other hand, monarchs are seperated from their subjects by a distance both in space and ritual. Nothing can illustrate this better than a brief, and by no means complete enumeration of the appellations given to western kings.
Kings in the west have been called "the great," "the good," "the bad," "the fat," "the boar," "the bear," "the bull," "the bold," "the rash," "the ugly," "the lazy," "the hasty," "bomba," and "bombalino."
They have been known as "the pious", "the silent", "the serene", "the pacific," "the simple," "the merry", "the bearded", "the lame," "the red", "the black", "the German", "the confessor", "the fearless", "the inevitable", "the lecher", "the necessary", "the unready", "the miser", "the hermit", "the fair", "silly Billy", "boustrappa" and "Fum the Fourth."
There has been a king or queen called "the fowler," "the navigator," "the she-wolf", "the wind", "the just", "the hammer", "the illustrious," "the giant," "the learned," "the Lion" "the magnanimous," "the magnificent", "The Chamois hunter," "The Brilliant Madman", "The Hammer of the World," "The wonder of the World," and "the Semiramis of the North."
Kings have been referred to as "the soldier king", "the sailor king", the "porcelean king", "the winter king", "the sun king", "the blue king", "the spider king", "the citizen king", "the dandy king", "the maiden king," "redbeard", "forkbeard", "ironhand," "shortsword", "lionheart," "longshanks", "shortthigh","longsword," "curtmantle", "lackland," "windy-cap," "Roi Panade", "Uncle", "curthose", "bluetooth". "crookback," "Franconi", "No-no," "Yes Yes," and "no-bone."
Kings have been "over the water", "under the mountain", and "in the woods". This creative, mirthful, sentimental, and at times unflattering and satirical monnikering of monarchs bespeaks of a more easy familiarity than the east where monarchs are known most often only by names such as "The Fierce" or "The Terrible." This difference of conception of kingship, east to west, is ancient. Consider a typical memorial "stella" of Ashur-nasirpal, King of Assyria.
" I Ashur-nasirpal have destroyed Ur and Lagash, I have laid waste their cities and carried off their treasures. Judah I have cut off and carried into captivity…
On the other hand consider one of the Indo-Aryan Persian Kings,
"I Darius the Great have restored… "
To further heighten and at the same time validate this distinction consider the Biblical book of Daniel. Daniel begins in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (actually Nabu-Naid) and goes into the reign of Cyrus. In the middle of the book of course is the well known story of Belthazzars feast with its "mene-tekel-Parsin". Yet before this story Nebuchadnezzar persecutes the Jews by throwing Shadrach Meschac and Abednigo into the fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar can do this because he is a tyrant pure and simple, and in a moral allegory of tyranny and the corruption of power Nebuchadnezzar is driven mad. Consider what happens when nobles of the Persian king conspire against Daniel. They tell the king that Daniel has broken the kings law. The king, Cyrus, therefore consigns Daniel to the LIons deen, but unwillingly. He prays that Daniels God will protect him. Cyrus suspects Daniel is being charged falsely, but he, the king, as his least subject, is bound by the law. When Daniel survives, Cyrus throws the evil councillors into the lions den where the lions make short work of them.
This profusion of more mundane and not always flattering names betokens a relationship far more intimate than the seeming distant one of ruler and subject. The analogy of kingship as a parallel of family life, and of the king as the kind, wise, just, benevolent father is a myth that defenders of monarchy have actively purveyed, and the public just as avidly consumed. The miraculous thing is that both sides have often really believed it and really tried to live up to the image. It was once asserted that "there is a divinity that doth hedge a king" this is true, but there is a humanity which hedges him about as well. In times of trouble people have looked to a distant or idealized past, to a good king who will come and write wrongs and restore the happy halcyon days. When oppressed by magistrates, soldiers, or taxmen, citizens would cry out "if only the king knew" – if they found out that the king indeed did know, and approved, they looked back to the "good old days" of his father, or they vested his son and heir with being the rising sun who would undo the work of the kings evil councillors. The present troubles of the English Monarchy are no exception. Charles and Di' were an ordeal and then a tragedy, and the pooperatzi seem to fiendishly fasten the details of the poor woman to turn it into another spectacle– in effect de "Camelot" (indeed the confluence of the name of Charles and the English throne seems to yield universally disasterous results), however it is now prince William (a name already garlanded with historical mystique) who people look forward to, to restore the monarchy.
This is no bygone or antique sentiment. The west is as besotted with monarchy as it ever was. People in democracies avidly follow the trials, tribulations, and antics of royal scions. Critics of monarchy point to the scandals and failings of these noble soap-opera stars as evidence of the incipient end of the institution, as fatally discrediting it, as of ruining its support.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The public has always feasted on these stories of royal peccadillos and rogueish behaviour. Kings, princess, duchesses, and Earls are allowed to do these things, for they are, in our minds, truly above us, of a higher morality and order. They are allowed, as public figures, to become, like the criminal, flaunters of the customs, restraints, and rules of society. This can be at the same time they are upheld as paragons, exemplars, and upholders, and reifiers of the very rules they flaunt. This contradictory and paradoxical view simply identifies the "royal folk" as one of us, both inside, and at the same time outside of society, caught between law and desire. They become vicarious surrogates for ourselves, doing the things that we do not have the means, but more often the nerve, to do.
But if, in our games, we let our fancies fly---
